Towards user-friendly all-sky surface longwave downward radiation from space: General scheme and product

Abstract Longwave downward radiation (LWDR) is an important driving parameter in climate and hydrological models. Compared to traditional ground-based measurements, remote sensing has unique advantages in estimating global LWDR. However, for current remote sensing missions, as the typical available satellite-derived LWDR product with global coverage and hourly temporal resolution, the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System-Synoptic (CERES-SYN) top of atmosphere and surface fluxes and clouds has a low spatial resolution (1° × 1°). There is still much room for improvement of the existing remote sensing LWDR products in terms of accuracy, spatiotemporal resolutions, and the ability to explain and quantify the changes of longwave radiation at various scales. To overcome these limitations, this paper developed a new global LWDR product with improved accuracy (the RMSE < 30 W/m2 over the globe), high temporal resolution (hourly), and spatial resolution (5 km) based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements. It serves as a LWDR product within the Long-term Earth System spatiotemporally Seamless Radiation budget dataset (referred to as LessRad). As the first long-term high-resolution, spatiotemporally continuous LWDR product (2002-2022, 1 h, 5 km), the LessRad reveals its advantages in studying the spatiotemporal variability of LWDR on finer scales. It also provides a valuable data source for various applications, such as analyzing land-atmosphere interactions and quantifying climate feedback, and thus, is potentially helpful for understanding the earth’s energy budget and dynamics.